I couldn’t sleep last night.

I’m thinking and thinking about Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, and the Why, How, and What…

I’m thinking, too, about how different fields of study develop different parts of your brain, and how they teach you to think in different ways. Math, Science, Social Studies, Music, Poetry, History, Language…

I’ll have to talk about it with someone later to help develop it, so this is raw and I’m just putting the idea out here, but I was thinking about God’s Word, and about all the different genres in the Bible, and how for pretty much ever God’s people listened to it (all of it) and followed along, not visually, reading words off a page, but in their minds as they tracked with what was being read.

Think of how their thinking would have been developed. Think of everything they would have had to wrap their minds around:

• History
• Social Studies
• Music and Poetry
• Math (calculating weights and measurements, for starters?)
• Science
• What about imagery and apocalyptic language?

I was thinking about how we get caught up in asking if details in the history are true, and throw the entire thing out over questions about words.

We don’t ask if God’s word as a whole forms us into wise and capable human beings, into what people can and should be, instead we throw out entire ways of thinking over questions about words…

I was wondering if maybe God gave his people his Word like he has because he wanted to form our minds, to teach us to be wise, to develop us into the kinds of people who can handle all kinds of things.

Real life takes many different skills and various ways of thinking. For example, you can’t be a calculator and forget about relationships because no one will want to be around you, and the reverse doesn’t work either. Or I’ll take traveling since it’s something I know: to get the most out of traveling you have to be able to think logically (to follow signage, for example), and have language skills (to understand signage in the first place) but you have to understand people as well (to ask for help when your language skills are lacking), and you have to have a sense of humor when you get lost after all, and it doesn’t hurt to be able to write a song or poem or draw a picture about your experience when you’re back home because that puts the whole experience into a form you can keep and pass along (like maybe to your new foreign friend who helped you with directions.)

I mean, think — the “best” artists and musicians and teachers and doctors and cab drivers out there are the ones who’ve found ways to combine different ways of thinking into to what they do:

• Music and Math
• Science and History
• Poetry and Music
• Language and Science
• Etc.

So my question is, are God’s people being formed into God’s People? Like maybe we’re… not? Maybe something isn’t happening that should; maybe we’re not developing like we could.

Maybe the minor prophets matter, and Ezekiel’s visions, and the feast laws, and the Psalms, and the Gospels, and the whole book of Esther from beginning to end. Not because of the words, but because of how our minds have to stretch around them.

Maybe God wants us to be wise. Maybe he wants us to actually — clearly and beautifully — think.